Dora Learns to Write Right

This week was a very big week as far as the maturing of my grammatical knowledge goes. We took a look at a story of a young student named Dora, who was just beginning to read and write her own stories. Her understanding of the language was pretty cloudy, as she wrote words together without spaces, and then progressed to putting periods in between the words for some reason. Eventually, through examples and some guidance from her teacher, she started to grasp sentence structure and was soon writing complete sentences on her own!

In class we organized a Socratic circle to discuss the reading on Dora, and analyze the process behind her writing. Instead of a fishbowl discussion, we had the whole class sit in a circle, which in my opinion, was a better system for talking about a certain chunk of reading. Everybody input what they thought to be the main message of the text as we looked at what worked for teaching Dora how to write.

Much of the class, including myself, focused on the fact that the teacher let Dora write misspelled words and even let her run the sentences together LIKDIS. Dora’s first sentences were extremely hard to decipher, but she was showing progress and the teacher wanted to foster that. I can’t remember who mentioned it in our class, but they commented on the fact that by not breaking her spirits she was actually being taught the wrong way. She could grow accustomed to these bad habits in writing, and the concepts of writing these wrong sentences could stick. However, as evident by her spelling and lack of understanding of words, I think she needed to be taught slowly but surely.

Dora’s progression is a classic example of different learning styles, and what it takes to finally achieve the common goal. In this case, the goal was being able to form a grammatically correct sentence (at least at a 1st grade reading level). Through practice and daily work, Dora grasped the concepts and was soon teaching her fellow classmates the tricks she had learned. It just goes to show that different children can learn differently, and take different approaches to achieve the goal in the end. My question is: how important is it to teach kids the right way the first time? In Dora's case, she takes a unique and extended approach to writing sentences, but eventually gains understanding. What is your opinion?

What have you learned so far, and what concepts discussed in class this week don't you fully understand?

I thought I was well rounded in my grammatical prowess, but after the first couple weeks of class I have found this to be false. More important than any concept I don’t fully understand is the concept I have actually learned so far. Grammar isn’t necessarily something that everybody can pick up instantly; there are multiple approaches to teaching and understanding the subject. Showing somebody the difference between “it’s” and “its” is a lot tougher than it looks, especially when you (the teacher) knows it so effortlessly.

Something I have always felt comfortable with, and have therefore overlooked, is the use of apostrophes. I never really realized how complicated the tiny character can be. Although I have been using them correctly throughout my writing career, I never understood how many more uses it has aside from possession.
The section of our scrapbook that we completed last week plays towards the complexity of our language, and the characters within it. Depending on the “House Style” of the publication, apostrophes might or might not be used with letters and numbers. ATM’s could be ATMs, or A.T.M.’s, or atms if you want to get tricky. I could really like 5s or I could be ecstatic over 7’s, solely depending on how I am feeling. This is confusing, although I understand why it is.

I admittedly have trouble understanding the concept of pronouns. Are they just a form of noun that isn’t direct that refers to a noun? Or is that just a confusing cycle that repeats infinitely? So I guess my question is: what is a pronoun and why should I care?